Food

Kimberly Thorn is a co-owner of Milk House Chocolates in Goshen, where Thorn and her husband Clint make chocolate using milk produced by dairy cows at the family's Thorncrest Farm. John McKenna / Republican-American

The trick to the perfect mingling of flavors in the spotless chocolate-making room at Thorncrest Dairy's Milk House Chocolates in Goshen is the freshness and quality of the ingredients.

Only the sweetness of milk from Supreme, a young Holstein cow with a modest udder stanchioned and munching hay in an attached barn, perfectly complements the delicate sweetness of raspberries harvested from the Thorns' garden. The fruit is pureed in the making of a raspberry chambord truffle.

Viola and Pearl give milk rich in protein and butterfat, which experimentation found to be perfect for almond truffles.

"You don't want to be overpowered by the cream or butter," said Kimberly Thorn, who with her husband Clint are the proprietors of Milk House Chocolates, which opened this month to the public.

Kimberly and Clint share barn and milking chores with their two sons, Garret and Lyndon, at the town's only dairy farm.

In a white chef's coat and matching white boots, Kimberly, a diminutive woman with a mane of thick salt-and-pepper hair and soft voice, barely perches over a glass case that is the focal point of the tiny storefront. It is about the size of European chocolatiers, she said.

The idea to create chocolate with milk from the family's Holstein cows was born in 1984 when Clint and Kimberly toured parts of Europe while they were dating as teenagers. Long before Godiva became synonymous with Valentine's Day, they sampled chocolate creations made in small quantities at artisanal chocolatier shops. By then, Clint Thorn had already started breeding cows on his father's farm to focus on the quality of their milk, a talent that would earn him top honors in national competitions.

The focus of last year's effort was to construct the 40-by-100-foot pegged timber-frame barn that houses a herd of about 40 small to extra large Jersey and Holstein cows and their calves.

Jersey milk is favored in cheese making, which Thorn finds much easier than the precision required in chocolate making. Its lactose enzyme tends to have a "nutty" flavor that accentuates cheese but competes with and overpowers flavors like mint, pumpkin, orange, hazelnut and Napa Valley Cabernet in the making of truffles, caramels and pralines.

Each batch has a prescribed optimal texture. Caramel centers must melt on the tongue. Pumpkin has the look and feel of a subtle pie flavor, minus the spices. Varied descriptors seem to borrow from the world of fine wines: silky, dense, velvety, earthy, with finishes that linger salty or sweet on the tongue.

"Like biting into an apple you expect to be crisp, you don't want to be disappointed by mush," Kimberly said.

Milk from selected cows is piped into a mixing vat and pasteurized in accordance with regulations for flavor batches, a process that can take up to a full day before being poured into molds. A signature mold, the form for which is carved by Clint out of clay, is still secret.

The other secret is in the mixing. Cacoa, the bean from which cocoa is derived, is imported from all over the world and crushed into nibs and combined with milk and cream.

"How we mix the refined cocoa beans and mix it with milk is a family secret," Thorn said.

Some taste tests turned out better than others. Cranberry and tomato didn't work. Ginger root, a pungent earthy form unlike the sugary confections commonly derived from it, turned out to be a powerful spicey flavor that married well to the strength of dark chocolate.

"We learned the value of doing things in small quantities using quality local ingredients," Kimberly said.

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Local milk, local sweets

Milk House Chocolates from Thorncrest Dairy in Goshen range in price from samples for $3.75, $30 for a half pound, and $60 for a pound. Milkhouse Chocolates, on Town Hill Road, is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. The shop will be open during the same hours throughout the week of Feb. 12. For details, call 860-309-2545 or visit Thorncrestfarm.net.

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